Lance Stroll will step out of his Aston Martin Formula 1 car and into a GT3 machine next weekend, with the Canadian confirmed for the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup season opener at Circuit Paul Ricard on April 11.
Lance Stroll will step out of his Aston Martin Formula 1 car and into a GT3 machine next weekend, with the Canadian confirmed for the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup season opener at Circuit Paul Ricard on April 11.
Stroll joins Comtoyou Racing as a one-off fourth entry alongside Roberto Merhi and Mari Boya in the #18 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, competing in the Pro class. The Belgian squad won the 2024 Spa 24 Hours with Aston Martin and has been running the marque’s GT programme in GTWC Europe ever since.
The outing has been made possible by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix in April, following the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. With a five-week gap in the F1 calendar, Stroll fills the weekend that would have been Bahrain with his GT3 bow. It makes him the latest F1 driver to sample GT machinery, following Max Verstappen’s entry into the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie.
Stroll is not without sportscar experience: he finished fifth at the 2016 Rolex 24 at Daytona in a prototype for Ford Chip Ganassi Racing, and returned to the event in 2018 in LMP2 machinery. GT3, however, is new territory.
Of his two co-drivers, Merhi brings the most relevant experience. The 35-year-old Spaniard — a former Manor F1 driver — has spent the past three seasons in Super GT’s GT300 class. Boya, meanwhile, is a current Prema Formula 2 driver and Aston Martin Academy member, and Paul Ricard will mark his first sportscar start.
The #18 joins a 59-car field that includes a number of other notable names. Three-time GTWC Europe champion Dries Vanthoor and four-time British Touring Car conqueror Ash Sutton will share Paradine Competition’s pair of BMW M4 GT3 Evos. Sportscar365 Vanthoor partners Darren Leung and James Kellett in the #991 Bronze Cup entry, while Sutton lines up alongside Robert de Haan and Christian Hahn in the sister car.
The six-hour race gets underway at 18:00 on Saturday April 11, finishing at midnight PlanetF1 — making it one of the few events on the calendar that runs almost entirely after dark. A two-day Prologue takes place on April 8-9 ahead of the race weekend proper.